Who would have thought? Wembley not once but twice and in the same season.
Monsieur Salut is old enough to have been at the famous Bob Stokoe/Jimmy Montgomery/Ian Porterfield FA Cup final on May 5 1973. Sadly, the promised ticket didn’t materialise so the game was watched with plenty of beer to hand in a first-floor flat in Uxbridge.
Jake: ‘thanks to all who participate’. Click this image to see all of this season’s interviews
It has become a bit of a stuck old gramophone record, Salut! Sunderland‘s pride in a tremendous season of Who are You? interviews with opposing supporters.
Judging is at an advanced stage for our HAWAYs – annual awards for Highly Articulate Who are You?s – and with only a couple of sets of votes still awaited, front-runners are emerging.
League One has been a goldmine for the series (not forgetting our cup-game interviewees from other divisions)
As Monsieur Salut put it when writing to the judges: “I could have put them all in a hat and drawn three at random, so good have so many of the interviews been.”
John McCormick writes: I have a problem with this game. I was working in Sunderland later in the week and had access to a ticket but had prior unbreakable work commitments in Liverpool on the Monday. It wasn’t until the Wednesday that I arrived at the Roker Hotel, (booked for me but not by me, you understand) parked my gear and went on a tour of the local hostelries. Most were flat, many still had no beer I’d drink, me not being a lager man, but I managed to get enough to keep me numb the next day.
But I don’t really have a problem with Palace. My Balham-born friends were supporters, if they supported anyone, and were not seduced by those fancy clubs across the river. Can’t complain about that.
But it’s different for Pete Sixsmith
John McCormick writes: I’m trying to remember what I was doing 25 years ago. I think I was looking around for a new job, having been knocked back in my career for being a narky get. I wasn’t really a narky get, I’d just reached the stage of having lost respect for a lot of managerial types and not caring who knew it. I could have been wrong about the year, though I did get a new job not much later.
No such doubts about what Pete Sixsmith was doing – both his daytime job and his other one as a Sunderland stalwart.
What are your best memories as a Sunderland supporter? As an exile I haven’t been to the SOL many times but I did see us win three and six times in a row, and though I was at Wembley in 1973 the semifinal is more lodged in my memory. That’s four games, to which I can add a win against the odds at Goodison when Danny bloody Graham scored.
Pete Sixsmith has been to so many more games he must have so many more good memories. Today he focuses on one game that really mattered:
Not much more than a year ago, Mike Dennison wrote about an utterly fascinating book by the exiled Sunderland supporter and wit Ian Mole on life on Wearside in the 1960s. Treat yourselves and read it, as a companion to what follows, at https://safc.blog/2018/02/the-heart-of-old-sunderland-remembered/.
Yes, there is a follow-up. Ian gets to produce another book barely a year on while Monsieur Salut labours on getting a first one finished. The title’s a gem but Mike – unwell recently so, we hope, fully recovered – signals an explanation rather than providing one, though it’s not hard to guess if you know anything about pop song lyrics. A Love Supreme offers it at this link and Mike suggests eBay for those who use it but I cannot find it on Amazon …
Jake: ´Pompey yet again – but by far the most important of the five times we’ve met this season’
Talk about doing it the hard way.
We knew the playoffs would be tough and that is how it is turning out, at least for us.
To no great surprise, we take a narrow lead to Portsmouth while Charlton grabbed a straightforward 2-1 win at Doncaster – forget the away goals, or absence of them, since these do not count in the EFL playoffs – and the finalists will be known by the end of this week. Our game is first up, on Thursday night, with Charlton completing what ought to be a formality 24 hours later.
A moral victory as well as an actual one, will that single goal be enough? That’s not a question I’m going to answer here as I don’t want to jinx a team that had more than enough bad luck in the first leg. It must be said the first 20 minutes were not good, but then we grew into the game and were dominant until an excellent substitution by Jack Ross was negated by a very poor refereeing deision
Pete Sixsmith will be doing a full report in due course, unless Malcolm subs for him, and will no doubt fulminate at length on that decision. For now he has but seven words with which to describe the game
Pete Sixsmith picks up our playoff saga and looks back to a season that left us feeling flat and deflated because of the way it ended. More of this next time, this is just the starter.
Colin Randall 
John McCormick writes: I have a problem with this game. I was working in Sunderland later in the week and had access to a ticket but had prior unbreakable work commitments in Liverpool on the Monday. It wasn’t until the Wednesday that I arrived at the Roker Hotel, (booked for me but not by me, you understand) parked my gear and went on a tour of the local hostelries. Most were flat, many still had no beer I’d drink, me not being a lager man, but I managed to get enough to keep me numb the next day.
What are your best memories as a Sunderland supporter? As an exile I haven’t been to the SOL many times but I did see us win three and six times in a row, and though I was at Wembley in 1973 the semifinal is more lodged in my memory. That’s four games, to which I can add a win against the odds at Goodison when Danny bloody Graham scored.
A moral victory as well as an actual one, will that single goal be enough? That’s not a question I’m going to answer here as I don’t want to jinx a team that had more than enough bad luck in the first leg. It must be said the first 20 minutes were not good, but then we grew into the game and were dominant until an excellent substitution by Jack Ross was negated by a very poor refereeing deision
Pete Sixsmith picks up our playoff saga and looks back to a season that left us feeling flat and deflated because of the way it ended. More of this next time, this is just the starter.
